Growing greek basil (the tiny stuff) from seed....

[orangina]

Hi there... I am NOT a gardener and live in London with a small balcony which I have decided needs TLC. As part of that, I am trying to grow a herb garden and have planted some greek basil seeds (indoors) in compostable egg cartons, which the kids have enjoyed spraying with water and watching the little seedlings come up. There are lots of little seedlings and they are quite leggy and I think they need to be moved to bigger pots. Having tried to do it, I feel I am failing miserably!

Question: should I be trying to plant each of the individual seedlings? Or can I just cut the egg carton segments and plant (say) 1 segment within a bigger pot, on the basis that the carton bit is compostable?

I feel clueless! Any guidance very gratefully received!

I wouldn't have thought the carton would rot down quickly enough to plant the seedlings in its sections. I'd probably try to extract the contents of each 'pod' together and repot as clumps, then as they grow do a combination of thinning out and pinching the tips of the remaining plants (eating the bits removed of course)

Actually, if I had kids and a lot of seedlings, I'd try as many different methods as we could think of, as an experiment.

Thanks Errol... the seedlings are leggy but still tiny, so I feel very fat fingered trying to separate and re-plant them individually... I like the idea of trying different approaches with the kids... we are NOT short of seedlings for experimental purposes!

Pots of 'normal' basil you buy in the supermarket are always clusters of small plants, not single stems, after all.

One thought re the legginess, are they in good light?

They are in very good light! They are indoors in a bright west facing room with lots of sunlight. I rotate the containers that they and the other seedling plants are in otherwise they are all leaning towards the light.... trying to strengthen their stems!

I was in the supermarket today where I do sometimes find pots of greek basil, but there were none today.... I was wanting to inspect their stems and how clustered they were, but no luck today...!

Unless the seedling is very robust, I tend to feel that the benefit of the seedling having its own space is outweighed by the damage you do to its roots when disentangling them. I never separate basil into smaller clumps than will separate out easily, I just pot them into a wider pot which has plant of space for roots to spread outwards.

Of course the traditional way of spacing tiny seedlings is to pull out and discard all the surplus, but that's when you're trying to develop big single plants, perhaps for root or seed crops. It's a waste to discard basil seedlings.

The poor little seedlings I tried to disentangle yesterday ALL look most unhappy today and I suspect will not make it through another night. Will definitely just keep the rest as they are and let them get on with it... thank you!

Keep them in the shade, keep the soil moist, and mist the foliage with water. They may surprise you.

Unlike most of our herbs which are plants of the dry Mediterranean, basil is a plant of wet tropical areas.

basil is a plant of wet tropical areas.

Even Greek basil?